But this is just bullshit and I will be harsh here, because we need to repair bettors minds and if I can change at least one mind, it is worth. I don’t care about what some people will say, because conclusions are based on my 20 year experience in sports betting world.

I saw a guy who made more than 2700 bets with yield of more than 17% and his followers can not make profit with his picks. If you don’t know and understand what is yield, ROI, CLV,… learn today or just stop betting, go do something else in your life. It is the same if baseball player would not know what is double play or QB doesn’t know what is touchdown. If you didn’t have motivation so far to learn basics about sports betting like yield, basic probabilities, …. you will never win and you will lose money. And those basics are free on the internet. Instead of watching Game of Thrones or being on instagram whole day, learn fucking basics.

Well…if I think twice…such lazy and foolish people should lose money, so bookmakers can pay us who make that small profit and that work hard on analysis and understanding betting. I don’t sell picks and will never sell picks, because I think it is wrong. But if I think twice, the prices should be much bigger for picks subscriptions. They should charge you $5000 per month.

YES. $5000 and more per month!

The foolish average Joes get what the foolish average Joes deserve. In the wild, weakest animals die. In sports betting naive bettors will lose money and will not survive. And those 95% of foolish people pay and work for those 5% that make money in sports betting world. They pay bookmakers, betting services and of course winning bettors. Winning bettors will get paid from bookmakers, because they are paid by foolish bettors. Is this ok? Well…it looks ok, if there are bettors/gamblers who invest in something that they don’t understand.

If you can not understand the concept of sports betting and making money in 2018 or 2019 with all the free information about betting on the internet, then you deserve to lose. Period.

So, let’s go trough couple of things, that bettors, gamblers, losers or whatever you call them, can not understand. And you know what it is amazing when I see smart people, from college, from universities, from math background, that still don’t understand what I will write here.

Why is this so? Some people will say, that our society is to soft now and when we lived in caves we were always under some risk and people need risk, this is why they gamble. But this should not be the reason, because when you start losing money all the time, I don’t know if this is fun anymore.

So what I will write here is not a rocket science. If you can not understand those simple concepts, you have no chance in sports betting or anywhere similar to betting. There are still other jobs and ways to make money. Go buy a garden and sell beautiful flowers. Flowers are always good. But don’t bet if you can not understand those simple concepts.

The fucking number one rocket science: THE CONCEPT OF MAKING MONEY

If you want to make money in sports betting, you need to take an investment approach (I don’t know which other approach could work). What is the concept of making money if you invest?

The concept is very simple. You need to invest in something with big potential. You can buy a real estate now for $300,000 and later sell it for $400,000. You made a profit. You can buy a car for $10,000 and sell it for $15,000. You can invest in stocks for low price and sell it for bigger price. Right? I hope you agree with me.

There is no other way. The concept of making money is to invest in something with big potential.

The fucking number two rocket science: THE PRICE IS THE KEY – NOT STUPID WINNERS

But what is the key here?

THE PRICE. THE PRICE. THE PRICE.

You need to be smart enough to buy a car for $10,000, so you can sell it later for $15,000. Right?

I think this is not hard to understand. Just take an example. We have two cars. Ferrari and Ford. Ferrari is let’s say a winner and Ford is not a winner.

So let’s say you are a car dealer….and you have a wife and you send her to buy a Ferrari, so you can sell this Ferrari later for bigger price. But you don’t tell her what is the last price to buy a Ferrari. She can buy Ferrari for 1 mio USD or for $20,000. But she doesn’t care, because she got a “PICK”, she got a “WINNER”. She will buy it no matter what the price is. And she will buy it for 1 mio USD. But you can not sell this car for more than 1 mio USD and you lose money because of this. So, you have winning pick, but you still lose. Wife = bettor who make a bet from other people without understanding anything.

On the other side you can make a profit with Ford if you can buy it for $4,000 and sell it for $5,000.

It’s not rocket science to understand this.

It is always about the price. It is always about understanding the price. You must understand for which price you buy this car and for which price you can sell it.

But what most bettors do? They look for winners, locks. Not odds, not closing line value, not probabilities, expected value,… but “winners”.

If you don’t understand the price, you will never make money in sports betting (not anywhere else).

How to come to the numbers and prices, well… this is another topic, which I will left for next time.

The fucking number three rocket science: THE PRICES are THE ODDS

In sports betting those prices are the odds. It is not rocket science again and if you can not understand this, stop betting.

We have the same bet or pick if you like:

NY Yankees -110

after 3 hours

NY Yankees -135

It is not the same price is you bet on Yankees -110 or Yankees -135, because if you bet on Yankees -110 you need to pay $110 to win $100. If you bet later, when the odds drop you pay more. You need to pay $135 to win $100.

It is not the same if you pay a car $5000 or $7000

It is not the same if you bet $110 or $135 for the same profit. Come on….this is not hard to understand.

It is not focus on who will win, but what is the price.

Winning bettors and potential future winning bettors understand this.

The fucking number four rocket science: DON’T BE A FOLLOWER

One of the problems you will face is odds dropping. For example, this season I beat the line 83.78% of time on international basketball league games. What this mean? This mean, that when I bet the odds drop later most of the time.

You as a follower will never get the same odds (price) and this is why you lose money.

Following is not winning mentality (I hope you agree with me – to understand this = not rocket science) and you need to find the way how to beat the market by yourself, because you have your own prices.

Just take an example of the bet Goyang +5.5 on December 5th, 2018

I took Goyang +5.5 at 1.93 (-107 US odds)

then the odds dropped to 1.66 for the same bet (Goyang +5.5)

What this mean for an average bettor when they follow other people’s picks?

We have the same bet. If you follow other people’s bets on the long run, you will probably lose money. Sharp bettor, who bet for himself (and has his own method and the knowledge how to pick games) can make nice profit. I took my basketball record and I took an example if bettor is playing with $100 per bet. So he will make more than +7000 USD of profit in this example. On the other side if you are a follower and if you are too late and if you don’t know for which price you buy the odds (= bet), then you can fall into the group of Follower 1 and Follower 2.

Most bettors don’t have any money management, nor the discipline to bet anyway. But let’s take “rare example”, that Follower 1 and Follower 2 have enough basic knowledge how to bet and they both started with $10,000 of a bankroll and their initial bet is $100.

They would make a huge loss in both cases. And usually when bettors follow good picks, they pay for subscriptions too. Most services charge at least $100 per month or more (there are services, that charge $1000 per month, but let’s take $100 per month as an example). So follower needs to pay $1200 for subscriptions in one year. This is $6000 in 5 years. And one bettor will basically lose his whole bankroll in first or two years, despite his advisor make a profit.

Of course not all games and the odds will drop in advisors favour. But in general if you follow profitable bettor, he will beat closing line and that means that most of the time you will get worse price.

The fucking number five rocket science: LEARN FIRST – BET LATER

Do you think that doctors first make surgery and then they go to medicine school?

Come on guys. I think my 4 year old daughter understand this.

Do you think you will drive safely on a road and then go to driving school?

Do you you think that engineer builds a bridge first and then he learns about building the bridges?

NO. All those things lead to a disaster.

But what bettors do?

They bet first. This is the first thing they do. They think that they watch games and they will find winners. And we saw, that it is not point in finding the winners, but finding the right price or value, if you like.

So, if you don’t know how to turn probabilities into the odds, then either go and learn or simply do something else in your life. Do you want to bet $100? Send to red cross. There are people that need this money.

So, you don’t know what is yield, what is ROI, what are implied probabilities, how to calculate bookmakers margins? You have no chance. You are just wasting your time. All those things are free on the internet and the only thing you should do so far is to use one site, which is called “google”. If you can not do this, you will lose.

The fucking number six rocket science: SUCCESSFUL SPORTS BETTING HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH SPORTS WATCHING

“I am big fan of baseball, I watch every game. I can pick winners”

Come one guys. Be serious. This has nothing to do with reality.

Watching sports, love for the sport is one thing. Betting/Investing on sport is another thing.

When you watch sport, you are focusing on the winners, on fun and to do this you need just a beer and good company. Of course you will hit winners sometimes, so you can brag about yourself on twitter. After all, there are usually 2 possible outcomes if you watch games (home win, away win). Of course you will hit something.

But when it comes to investing/betting I believe your goal is to make money. And in this case, this has more in common with investments, probabilities, statistics, math, then with watching sports. You need to beat the market if you want to make money. If you still don’t understand this simple concept, you are wasting time reading this. After all, we need you to lose, so bookmakers can pay us.

It requires good strategy, analysis, so you know what is good price to bet, discipline, realistic expectations,….

What do you think, who is on other side? What do you think who are bookmakers? Do you think that those are some kids playing with computers? No. Bookmakers are very smart companies with best experts who work 24/7.

Why do you think, they change the price (odds) if this the odds are not important? Odds are important. Not “winners”, “locks”, “guaranteed plays” or other marketing material for foolish people.

It is all about the price. It is not about winners. And if you think that you are a “good” sports fan that can pick winners you will lose sooner or later. If you are looking for winners instead of value, you will lose. Even if you find someone with good “picks” you will not get the same price and if you are want to follow other people’s picks, you are in that stage “YOU DON’T KNOW THAT YOU DON’T KNOW”. If you are in the dark when it comes to the prices, then you will never be successful trader, investor or a bettor.

I saw a bettor who made more than 2700 picks with the yield of +17.08% which is absolutely amazing. But his clients/followers couldn’t make a profit, because they didn’t have a clue about money management, betting, statistics,….

Spend extra time to learn about betting on the internet, rather than looking for picks.

Final note: If you made it this far and read my texts, you must understand one thing – I intentionally wrote such harsh post, because I want to shake heads little bit and change some people’s minds. The problem is that most bettors don’t know that they don’t have a clue about whole thing. And not even where to start. But at the same time they are to lazy to research the whole thing and learn how to bet. If I can change at least one mind and one gambler, so he starts researching betting and because of this he becomes a winner or he just sees, that this is not for him (and because of this stop losing money), I am happy. It is enough for me. It was not intention to offend anyone, but I wanted to shake your head, motivate you, so you start thinking out of the “gamblings” box. Hate me because of this post, but use my advice (stop following anyone and start learning how to bet, what are probabilities, etc…) and come back after one or two years. I am sure you will see sports betting world with different eyes. Start researching: “CLV in betting”, “Projections in betting”, “Betting models in betting”.

In 2017 I have created betting model for basketball and after 1373 bets we made a profit of close to 70 units. In other words, $100 bettor made $7000 of profit in last 2 seasons. And more than 1000 bets is not small sample size anymore. And what I am most happy at this moment, is that since I started tracking CLV numbers, we beat the line in more than 80% and CLV is more than +4%.

The beauty of the model is simplicity. Anyone can use it, anyone can implement for any league that he wants and I saw some great results from my members, who have this model, also in some other sports (rugby, handball).

So, I was thinking how to take the ideas from basketball betting model and use it for NFL betting.

NFL is a new sport for me and I wanted to give some simple betting model to my members, so they can project the numbers before they bet. It still amazing how many people bet without numbers and without using any statistics at all. But more and more people are aware that betting without numbers will not make any profit on the long run.

After all, lines, spreads, totals, odds and handicaps are nothing else than some kind of probabilities turned into the numbers. And those numbers directly represent the prices on betting market, that you pay (bet) at the end. So, it is crucial to have statistical method, that will estimate those prices even before bookmakers.

This is not rocket science. It is basic concept of making money. You need to know the price before you buy. You need to know if you can sell it later (so you can make profit) for a bigger price. In sports betting that means, that when you see Green Bay Packers -7, you need to know if this is good spread to bet or not. You need to know what is the last spread that you are willing to take Green Bay Packers (in this case).

So, I wanted to get those spreads and totals before bookmakers open their lines.

And this is how I combined my basketball model with NFL stats. It gives me my projected (or expected) lines and totals. Then I simply compare those spreads/totals with bookmakers numbers.

When I see big enough difference between my numbers and their numbers, I simply make a bet.

Because of simplicity and because of very small number of games in one season, I look for big difference and I bet 1 unit per game on each game.

EAGLES -6

JETS/PATS – Over 46.5

The question is… can this continue?

From my perspective I simply used the ideas of my basketball betting model and put it here with some adjustments. So, at the end of the day, I get my projections (spreads/totals) before I make final betting decisions. And I am not even NFL bettor. I think this is much more powerful to those who bet NFL on a regular basis, so they get the numbers before placing bets.

The only concern is CLV number so far. But I would also say, that NFL market is very special, because a lot of people with zero betting knowledge (and a lot of NFL “sports fan knowledge”), who don’t use any statistics, analytics or any other mathematical/statistical method bet huge amount of money. It is very small sample size of games and a many people are simply gambling. So, the market is definitely little bit different than NHL or MLB betting market.

However, I will try to improve this betting model in the future and will track my progress to see where we can improve it. I will keep informing bettors what is important to win and on what they should focus, when they bet NFL.

And the last, but not the least important thing is the bookmaker. I see many US bettors who bet online on all kind of unknown/exotic bookmakers. One of the best bookmakers for NFL and also for all my basketball bets with the best odds and with the biggest accepted bets is 5Dimes. Yes, they don’t have the best looking site. Yes, you will need to go trough small procedure when you open account, but after that… this is definitely one of the best bookmakers sites for US bettors at this moment.

Whether it is learning a skill or having success in any job or career, there are proven ways to succeed, and it is important to understand and use them. It is no different in sports betting. Anyone serious about becoming a winning bettor knows that it will take some time and dedication to become a professional bettor, but the reward at the end is huge. Of course, talent can play a part in being successful, but if you follow these basic principles you will have big chance to win in sports betting in the long run.

Building knowledge

This is the first step to become a professional bettor. It includes everything from betting skills, sports expertise and understanding the concept of betting, concept of value, probabilities and all other things.

Building Predictive Skills

Professional bettors make money by predicting the outcome of a match based on their skill. The most important is to find the edge over the bookmakers or if you like find different (or better if you like) probabilities than bookmakers probabilities. I use my betting models to calculate my winning percentages and my own odds, that are later compared with bookmakers odds. Bookmakers will always adjust the numbers based on market and there is a chance.

Raising funds

Usually bettors raise funds first and then they bet without enough knowledge and without predicting skills. Huge mistake. But we all made same mistake.

Selecting a bookmaker

Every professional bettor will tell you that this can be a headache if you pick wrong bookmaker. Most bookmakers in the world will ban you if you will constantly win and you should always pick a bookmaker with low margins.

Money Management

Even if you have all the skills, huge funds and understand the concept of betting you can not win if you don’t have strong strategy. I saw skilled bettors, but without any strategy. They lost whole money in 2 months, despite they were winning in other 10 months.

Tracking your record and measure your betting skills

Anyone serious about betting will track his records and measure predictive skills. The best way to do this is to look how you do against closing odds and by tracking other important information, like yield, profit, etc. CLV will show you if you have the edge over the market and if you have constantly positive CLV, you will be a winner on the long run.

Discipline and mentality

Betting discipline is one of the most underrated betting skills, but if you don’t work on your discipline, all other skills above are useless. It is also very important to control emotions. Never celebrate when you win and never panic when you lose.

Ability to learn and adopt

The things are changing quickly. Professional bettors are willing to learn, improve and adopt to new situations. Sports betting world is changing quickly and the time when sports fans were winning is gone. Sports betting has more in common with financial investing, math and statistics than with watching sports or being a fan.

https://underdogchance.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Girls-Night-Out-46.png10801920MBhttps://underdogchance.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/logostran.pngMB2018-07-26 18:48:132018-07-29 00:22:00What is required to be a professional bettor?

how are you? I hope you are dong well and I hope you are making some profit as well.

The World Cup group stage games will be over today and if you watched my betting course about World Cup, you would make cca +10 units of profit so far. Depends on the odds you got, but I made +10.39 units of profit so far. The best odds are on Cloudbet.

If you didn’t watch the course about World cup and ideas how to beat the market, you can watch it here:

At the end of the course you get also a chance to learn how to easily turn the probabilities into the odds for football/soccer.

If you didn’t watch it – in short….

​World Cup is special event with 64 games

There is almost no betting model for this world cup and if there is one, it is very hard to estimate probabilities. To many obstacles, like ranking teams, not enough statistics, huge psychological​ factors,….

Nobody can guarantee a profit and mostly amateurs bettors and sports fans take this competition as a serious competition from sports betting perspective.

This is biggest event in 2018 and many people that don’t watch sports, right now watch every single game. Many of them bet too and there was huge amount of money added to the market

So, if we are regular daily bettors, right now we are not alone and there is huge amount of extra money involved

Because of all that also the bookmakers don’t know how to set the odds properly, but they know one thing. They know how amateur bettors and sports fans think.

Amateurs bettors will bet a lot on World Cup games, without any strategy or pre-research, they talk about every single game, they take this world cup very seriously, they also like to bet on huge favourites and we have probably couple of millions new “betting experts”.

Because of all that, bookmakers offer them “tricky” odds on favourites.

Before the world cup, I researched the market and I saw, that betting blindly on underdogs in last couple of big competitions was profitable ting to do. This was announced in my video above. It is a combination of all those tings I mention here.

“What is your point to bet on all underdogs?”

That was the question I received yesterday. If this is so easy, why everyone don’t bet on all underdogs?

Why you bother with watching games, reading news, when you know that you don’t have any edge?

Many bettors think they have the edge in those games, but in fact they don’t have. I don’t have the edge in any of those games, you don’t have the edge and bookmakers don’t know how to set the odds, but they have margins and they have a lot of amateurs gamblers, that will lose money anyway. But in general it is almost not possible to have the edge compared to betting prices. And if there is someone who won couple of games without some strict strategy, system or estimation of the odds, it was probably pure luck.

Nobody can guarantee a profit in world cup games and nobody can guarantee that one team will win. We saw how Germany lost to Korea and focusing on one single game is in my opinion not right way.

It is little bit easier to beat the competition than one game. Even this is not a guarantee, but if you look at bigger picture, you have bigger chance.

Instead of focusing on on game, I focused on whole competition and on whole 64 games. I saw that betting on underdogs was profitable on big competitions and this is sample of 254 games now since 2010 (added 44 games now). I also recommended two other strategies, that have not such a good record in the past, but both could be profitable as well (betting on draws and betting on double chance against favourites – explained in video). I didn’t check the record on those two strategies, maybe some of you play this too and you can show us what is your record.

254 big competition games (EURO, WC) since 2010:

​+33.98 Units

Yield: +13.38%

I think you can not do much better than this.

So, the answer on what was my point is this: I researched the market before the world cup. I didn’t just say – bet on underdogs without reason. I understand how bookmakers think and I know how sports fans/recreational/amateur bettors think. They also act very emotionally and they like to bet on huge favourites. So I looked at the bigger picture and I didn’t want to predict one game. I found some patterns, I researched past competition with betting odds (not who won, but how you can make money compared to the odds on the market). And of course when we take into account common sense and mentality of recreational bettors, I came to final conclusion.

When I see bets on the internet like Switzerland over 3.5 or Germany 1.40, I really don’t understand how those people come those those prices. So, if you bet on Germany 1.40, then you must estimate somehow, that this price should be lower (like 1.25 for example) and it is very hard to estimate those prices on such event. No games, very small sample sizes, confusion with the market, etc…

So, the point is that when I recommended to bet on underdogs, that was with the reason and there was some work behind this. The reason was – betting market and understanding it. I don’t care if Germany needs win, I didn’t care if Korea is not playing for anything. I knew, that betting on underdogs has probably some advantage, that was the pattern in the past and if we take into account mentality of amateur gamblers, who bet on huge favourites, there are strong reasons for doing this. I would probably never come to this conclusion if I would not understand the market, I would not come to this conclusion if I would not make every single mistake in the past and learn on my own losses.

If blindly betting on underdogs is very easy thing to do, why most bettors don’t do this?​

I mentioned many times, that blindly betting usually doesn’t work, because bookmakers take such things into account. For example, betting blindly on underdogs or betting blindly on favourites will lead to a loss in MLB baseball. But bookmakers know how to set the odds there, because of many games, where it is easier to set the odds. On the other side, they are also confused with World Cup and because of this there was a chance to take the advantage.

There is of course NO POINT , if you wake up in the morning and you say, I will bet blindly on underdogs without a reason and have fun.

On the other side…

There is A POINT, if you wake up in the morning and say, I will research the market, I will research mentality of bettors, I will look at how bookmakers think, how bettors think and what was most profitable thing to bet in last big competitions, because of the same nature of event. After that I will make a conclusion and I will share those information with my followers, so they can look at the competition from different perspective than some amateur gambler, who will try to analyse every single game and bet on Spain 1.50 and Germany 1.40. If the message was completely understood, I think you could take the advantage so far and even have fun watching those games.

I bet only for fun….

In the video I said, that I will bet for FUN, I will bet SMALL and I will bet on underdogs (I recommended 3 different strategies, one of them was betting on underdogs). Why I decided for underdogs? Because I bet for fun, I don’t take this competition seriously and for me it is more exciting to cheer for underdogs. And also if we strictly stick with the research, the most profitable betting in the past was on underdogs:

​Bets on Favourites (last 210 big competition games): -14.46 Units

Bets on Draws (last 210 big competition games): +11.04 Units​

Bets on Underdogs (last 210 big competition games): +23.59 Units​

So, it was logical for me to bet on underdogs from both perspective. ​

This is not project for me – this is entertainment for me

I don’t gamble with such competitions. I bet for fun and very small. I could spend this money for parties, for drinking, cigarettes, but I decided that I will forget that amount of money. If I lose all, no problem. But if I bet it will make games more interesting to watch. That was my reason – just fun.

I know some people started to panic and this is what I announced in video as well and some people think that this is some serious project for me. I don’t gamble with those competitions. And this is not a project for me. With the video and with my information I wanted to help YOU, so you don’t make mistakes like most amateur gamblers. And I would not recommend to take this competition as some serious project.

Project for me is MLB for example. This is for me project, where I estimate the odds, try to beat closing line value, etc… but not World Cup. So, no matter what happen, this is not serious project for me and if you read and watch my videos, you should understand this.

If I say, that this is very risky competition, if I say, that I will bet only for fun and very small, if I say, that nobody can guarantee a profit,… and if you still decide to put your whole bankroll on this competition, it is your decision. I would definitely never recommend to bet big on such events. There are some ways how to take the advantage of this competition (like I explained in video above), but this is still not a guarantee, that it will work. It gives us just better chance against others.

So, what to do know if you still bet big and if you took my advice from video?

Right now the record is +10.39 units with the yield of +23.61%

If we go back and if I tell you before the world cup, that you will make exactly 64 bets and you will finish with the yield of +10% and +6.4 units of profit, I think everyone would take it. Yield of +10% or everything above +5 units on 64 games (if we bet 1 unit flat on each game) is very very good.

Right now we (or me) made more than +10 units. You can not expect much better result.

So, I recommend to take profits and don’t bet anymore on World Cup if you bet big and if you took this competition very seriously. This is nice profit. If you bet seriously always take profits. Simply take money, so you know, that you made a good thing. And expecting that you will finish this world cup with the yield of +30% or more is very optimistic. I don’t say it can not happen, but if you bet big, take profit if you listen to my advice and that’s it.

This is what I recommend now!

What about me?

I don’t care about this competition that much. I usually watch couple of minutes of every game, because I usually don’t have much time because of other work. I don’t even know if I watched full game yet. But I still have lot of fun. I consciously​ took some small amount of money to bet for fun in this world cup. And I will keep betting just for fun. I don’t care that much for profit here, because I bet one coffer per game. I still believe that I will finish with profit at the end. Maybe only +5 units, maybe less, maybe more, but I believe I will finish in profit.

WHAT TO DO NOW?

I am not important here, or what I will do, because I do this for fun. It is more about you and I wanted to help you with advice before the world cup and I want to help you with advice now. If you took my advice earlier, you made a profit so far. Right?

So here is my last advice if you bet seriously on this competition:

Stop betting and take profits, because you can not expect much better result than +10 units and yield of more than +20%. We call this – realistic epectations and sometimes you need to know when to stop.

If you bet for fun like me with the money you can lose without any problem, than keep having fun. I like to act as a sports fan here, I like to make some “fan tweets” on my twitter and I will say Croatia will be world champion and will beat England in final 🙂 🙂

But if you bet seriously – I recommend to take profit and stop. This is amazing result so far if you followed my advice before World Cup and you can not expect much better result than this.

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On October 6th, 2017 I decided, that I will take one 1 bitcoin and I will invest it in my 5 year betting project. The idea is that I make a profit in next 5 years (in other words – create more bitcoins, that I already have), but at the same time I hope, that bitcoins will help me with the growth.

The bitcoin was $4,400 back then and right now when I am writing this is around $18,000. It was a good decision and I think that this is not the end.

I don’t have any influence on bitcoin raise, but I try to focus on my sports betting. Based on my past results, I can reach yield (some people call it ROI) of around 3-5%. This is based on my past performances and I will do my best to reach this.

I also share this journey on my site and yesterday I received a message from my friend:

“How can I become a millionaire by following your bets?”

I replied:“It is very unlikely that you will become a millionaire with my bets”

His question was my motivation to write this, because a lot of people create an illusion, that they will follow someone and that they will become a millionaires. I am not talking only about sports betting, but in general.

But let’s talk about millionaires

We will exclude people who were born in rich families and we will exclude people who won a lottery. There are some people who invested smart, but this is also another topic and they probably worked hard before they invested in something.

Most of those rich people that didn’t work much in their lives are lucky (or unlucky), because they were born rich. But usually those people are soft and a lot of times they can not hold this money forever. This statement is not made by me, but there were couple of researches about this topic. According to the Williams Group wealth consultancy research 70% of wealthy families lose their wealth by the second generation, and 90% by the third.

So, it is not about how much money you have when you are born and it is a known fact, that lot of millionaires started from nothing. A lot of them are even without formal education. That doesn’t mean, that they don’t work hard or that they don’t invest in their knowledge, but to become a millionaire you don’t need to be born in a rich family or have a formal education.

Most of us are in the second group and we don’t have parents, that are already millionaires. Despite that I think that we are very lucky, because we live in a time, when becoming a millionaire is much easier than in the past.

Thomas C. Corley spent five years researching lives and habits of 177 self-made millionaires and he said: “From my research, I discovered that daily habits dictate how successful or unsuccessful you will be in life”

He also found, that millionaires don’t follow the herd:

“We so desire to blend in, to acclimate to society, to be a part of the herd, that we will do almost anything to avoid standing out in a crowd….failure to separate yourself from the herd is why most people never achieve success….You want to separate yourself from the herd, create your own herd, and then get others to join it.”

Patterns about herd are everywhere

Cristiano Ronaldo and his fans
Gary Vaynerchuk and his followers
Justin Bieber and his fans
Elon Musk and his followers
…

On the left side we have millionaires and on the right side we have followers.

Tell me now if you know ONE follower, who became a millionaire just by blindly following someone. I don’t know anyone and if there is someone, they are in a tiny minority.

All those millionaires have couple of things in common:
They work hard. Cristiano Ronaldo is first at training and he always try to be better than others. I am not a fan of Real or Ronaldo, I am just talking about the facts.
They focus on their work. They don’t blindly follow other people. They don’t even have time to bother with other people’s lives and rather spend this extra time for what they love.
They do something that they love and with a lot of passion
They don’t look for shortcuts in their lives and they don’t focus on money

They are wolves for me.

And to become a millionaire you most become a wolf first. If you are a sheep you will not become a millionaire.

If you focus on your work, your passion and not on money, you are a wolf.

If you focus on money and if you believe that someone will make you rich, you are wrong. If you think, that you will work 10 minutes per day or just follow some advice for 10 minutes per day and you will have millions in next 5 years you are wrong.

This is not going to happen. If this would be so easy, I would be already a millionaire ten times. But my focus are not millions, but something else. I don’t care about fancy cars, fancy clothes and most millionaires don’t care about those stuff either. Only if you are a Kim Kardashian, but this is her profession anyway. What I care is my work, my passion and effort. I try to stay motivated every day and I try to do what I love.

But being a follower is not necessary bad thing if you do it right and this is why we also must separate followers into two groups:

Sheep followers and smart followers.

Sheep followers focus on money and when they see some successful people, they want to do exactly the same thing, not because this is their passion, but because they see money. They will blindly follow steps, but they will never put a lot of effort, passion or work into it. In sports betting those kind of followers are everywhere. They are just looking for someone, that will give them some picks, so they can win.

The second group are smart followers. All successful people are smart followers too. They try to connect with smart people, they try to receive their advice, they try to learn from the best and they follow someone to become better. I believe, that I am such a follower. I follow couple of guys. But I am not focusing on their money I also don’t wan to do exactly the same things. I don’t want run marketing agency, just because Gary Vaynerchuk does and he has a lot of money. No. That would be crazy, because this is not my passion. What I like is his energy, his advice about success and my motivation is always to learn. After all, if you go to the school, you are some kind of smart follower.

This is the difference between sheep followers and smart followers. Smart followers will try to focus on what they love and for them it is more important how they make money, then how much they make. I try to live by this principle. I love sports betting, I love researching games, I love writing about sports betting, I like everything around sports betting, technology, bitcoins and other stuff connected with it and this is basically what I do whole day, every day.

Being a sheep follower in sports betting will lead to big disappointment in most cases

I am connected with sports betting business last 20 years with all ups and downs. During all these years, I went trough the hell and I was even doing some jobs, that I didn’t like, but I was also connected whole this time with a lot of sports bettors all around the world. And I can guarantee you, that 99.99% of people that follow other people’s sports picks are very disappointed at the end.

I never said, that there are no good handicappers out there. In fact I think that there is many great handicappers out there, that work hard, that are very smart and make a living from betting on sport.

I am not talking about this.

I am talking about being a sheep follower, which has only one goal – MONEY. Without any effort, without any passion to researching games, analysing games, watching games,….

I believe, that if you are a follower your whole life, you will not become a millionaire. And I also believe, that if you follow other people’s picks you will not become a millionaire in sports betting.

It is not your fault, despite being a sheep. It is also not a fault of your successful betting service.

It is a general problem in a sports betting world.

Sports betting world has changed and following other people’s picks is almost not possible anymore. Bookmakers are smarter and smarter now, they can change the odds every second and the odds, that you get, are the prices, that you pay. Betting on wrong price can lead to a loss. Betting 5 minutes later can lead to a loss.

And now include the cost of monthly service too.

Here is my video , that I have recorded to show you how bookmakers drop the odds immediately. I intentionally take the odds from one of my basketball leagues. Bookmakers are very smart and they will drop the odds. The odds are dropped a lot of times during the day and if I bet for myself, I can get the odds of 2.00. If you follow my bets, you can easily get the odds of only 1.90. This is happening all the time. If you are too late, you will probably get bad odds. Of course there are bettors that beat closing lines, but if they beat closing lines and if they bet last minutes on those games for example, can you open email and bet in the same minute? I don’t think so.

Your results will never be same, then mine or theirs.

With my betting project I plan to make from 5000-1000 bets in next 5 years. Yes it is long journey and I can not guarantee that I will make a profit at the end. But I believe, that I have enough passion, betting knowledge and skills to succeed. After all, If I would not believe in it, I wouldn’t even start.

So, let’s take an example how much money you lose if you get the odds of 1.90 instead of mine 2.00.

As you see, we can have exactly the same results, play the same games, but because I will bet for myself first and then you will be late, you will get much lower odds and it can happen, that you make a loss and I will make a profit on yield of 4%. Most bettors (that small percentage of all bettors in the world) that make a profit will not make a yield of more than 3-5% on the long run.

If I succeed and if I make a profit in next couple of years, you will probably lose your money, if you will blindly follow my bets. This is something that most handicappers and betting services will not tell you and most bettors still don’t get it. It is a general problem in sports betting world. Not to mention limiting players, bans from bookmakers, country restrictions, different time zones and impossible to follow every single bet.

Because of that, I think that the first step into the world of successful sports betting is the right mindset.

Being a sheep will not make you a millionaire. Not in sports betting not in any other area.

Based on my observation, we have 3 types of people involved in sports betting world, plus we have bookmakers.

Bookmakers run the show. They will take 98% of all cake and we can call them LIONS. They take what they want, when they are hungry, they eat a sheep and nobody can do anything about this. There will be always enough sheep for them.

WOLVES

Then we have wolves. Those are bettors, betting sites and betting services, who take small part of this cake too. Wolves don’t want to be sheep followers, they are smarter, they learn, they work hard, they improve, they update their knowledge, they make a business around sports betting and they usually focus on their own work (like millionaires). If they follow someone, they follow smart people, they learn, they improve things, but always because they want to become better and not because they bet something that they don’t even understand. Sports betting, researching games is their passion too. At the end, they take their part of the cake too and some of them can become a millionaires. Not by following other people’s work, but because they worked hard.

HYENAS

Then we have hyenas. Those are people, that don’t have enough knowledge or skills to bet. When you see people, that start conversation like: “I have 100% fixed game” “I have guaranteed play of the year” “I will make you rich”… you know, they are hyenas. Nobody will make you rich, except you and only you. With your hard work, right attitude, good habits and your knowledge. It is up to you how you will get this knowledge, but the fact is that nobody will make you rich. To promise someone, that he will win big or get rich quickly is a “hyena thing”. They also don’t put a lot of effort when it comes to sports betting. Usually they sell some fixed games, they sell unrealistic dreams and they will find some victims for sure. They usually spend 80% of time for marketing, hunting victims on social media and selling them unrealistic dreams. Being hyena in sports betting world is an insult for me.

SHEEP

And then we have sheep. They are fucked by all.
Lions attract them and they will eat them, whenever they want. Lions run the show and they have how many sheep they want. There will be always enough sheep for them.
Wolves will fight with lions, some of them will also eat a sheep when they need. At the end, wolves will get a piece of sports betting cake too. But with a lot of fight, hard work and effort.
And there are also hyenas who will eat the most weakest sheep of all sheep. We all despise hyenas, but they will always find some sheep too.
At the end, sheep is always the one who is eaten by all others. And sheep are people who want to become rich quickly in sports betting by following others without any effort. Those are people, that create an illusion that someone will make them rich. Usually they jump from site to site. Usually they expect, that there is someone, who will make all the work for them and if possible for free. Usually they are angry when they lose and they blame everyone for their loss. They blame players, because they didn’t play well, they blame their betting advisor, because he didn’t give them a winner. But they never blame themselves. They simply don’t understand fundamental thing – there is no such a thing like overnight success and success without your own effort. There is no such a thing in sports betting, where you will follow someone for 5 minutes and then you will become a millionaire.

The only focus by sheep in sports betting is just money. They want to make money, but they want to be just followers and they believe, that someone else will make the job for them.

I don’t say, that If you are betting just for fun, that this is wrong – this can be great entertainment. I think, that betting small and then watching a game with your friends can be very exciting. Some people spend money for drugs, and I think it is nothing wrong if someone else bet money, that he can afford, just for fun.

But I will also say always, that if you bet for excitement only, then you don’t need to follow anyone. Right? The beauty of entertainment in sports betting is that you make your own bets and then brag about yourself when you win in front of your friends. Even if you make bets just because of fun, satisfaction is much bigger if you make bets on your own.

It is ridiculous, when I see people going to Las Vegas to have fun for three days and then they pay for betting advice. This is total nonsense. Nobody can guarantee you that you will win exactly this weekend or in next 3 games. It is just gambling in very short period. Why would you pay for such advice? Just gamble for yourself and have fun. Maybe you win, maybe you lose, but at the end of the day, you will have great time.

There are still some betting services that make profit and they are even so good, that you ca make some profit too if you pay for their service. But if you include all problems that you will face when you follow someone, it is not worth. Sports betting has changed and it is not like other investment funds, because there are limits and nobody can bet for you. Sometimes I can not bet 0.05 bitcoins, sometimes I can not bet 500 EUR, because bookmakers will simply not allow me to bet this amount of money. So, it is not possible that 100 people give money to one person and then he makes the same bets, at the same time of the day, for the same price. It is simply not possible. You need to bet for yourself. And the fact is that 98% of people lose all the time and most bettors in the world are sheep, who are just focusing on other people’s work.

And most people in general, not only in sports betting would like to have millions, but they don’t want to work for it. They focus on money not on their work, knowledge, effort and passion. And I think this is wrong focus.

Because of that I think that the only way to make a profit on the long run in sports betting is to become a wolf. This is the first step, that must happen in our heads.

Some wolves will not survive, but at least they tried, they worked hard and they put all the effort. After all, even if you open a restaurant and you give 100% it is possible that you lose. But at least you are a wolf.

I believe, that anyone can be a wolf. The only people involved in sports betting that I despise are hyenas. We all were sheep at some point of our lives, but I believe, that you can turn from sheep follower to a smart follower and later into a wolf.

Smart followers will not blindly follow other people’s picks. After all, I explained why it is so hard to follow someone’s picks these days.

And if we go back to the question from my friend. I think this is wrong focus. If you want to become a millionaire, you simply wake up in the morning and work. You simply put a lot of effort in something, that you love. Then you have a chance.

It is no different in sports betting. If you want to make money and millions, you will work, you will fight, you will study. You will not follow herd, but you will try to find your way and start writing your own successful story. You will find people, that will give you some value, so you can learn from them and you will understand, that sports betting is not easy. You will understand that sports betting is run by lions. You will understand, that even if you are a wolf, there is a chance that you will not succeed, but you will also understand, that if you are a wolf, you have a chance. And you will understand, that if you are a sheep, you will be fucked by all of them and you don’t have any chance at all.

And everything starts with the right mindset and turning from a sheep follower to smart follower and later to a wolf. Good bets, money and everything else will come later if you will start with right mindset.

Lions, wolves and hyenas will not turn sheep into the winners. Sheep must turn themselves first into wolves and then they can start dreaming about millions.

when it comes to baseball most bettors will take a look on ERA, BA and RUNS scored per game. But those numbers are not good future predictors and can fool an average baseball bettor. Here are couple of Sunday’s games, that are very interesting:

Colorado (Bettis) at Miami (Smith)

Team

Pitcher

Hand

SIERA

xFIP

ERA

Rockies

Chad Bettis

R

4.92

4.64

2.4

Marlins

Caleb Smith

L

4

4.16

5.82

This game is definitely one of the first you can take a deeper look on. Colorado will face Marlins and Miami just changed their pitchers to start Dan Straily on Monday. They will start with Caleb Smith on Sunday and on the first look Colorado will have huge pitching advantage, because their pitcher Bettis has much better ERA. But as I said many times, ERA is not the best future predictor for baseball games and we need to take a look on other important factors and ERA estimators. And we see, that Smith has better numbers here. I would say, that Bettis numbers are poor and Smith numbers are average or slightly below average. Most bettors will be fooled with ERA numbers in this game I believe, but if we compare pitchers in this game, then I would not give any advantage to Colorado.

Arizona (Ray) @ Washington (Gonzalez)

Team

Pitcher

Hand

SIERA

xFIP

ERA

Diamondbacks

Robbie Ray

L

3.45

3.49

5.13

Nationals

Gio Gonzalez

L

4

3.86

3.04

The second game that is very interesting is between Arizona and Washington. Gonzalez has much better ERA, but if we compare other ERA estimators, then we see that Arizona will have the advantage. Note also, that this is a game with two left handed pitchers. Arizona scores 5.4 runs per game against lefties and Washington only 3.6 with very bad BA of 0.197. I rank Arizona as 8th best versus LHP and Washington as 28th vs LHP. But one interesting about Ray is that he lost all games in his career against Washington (0-4, ERA 6.65).

Seattle (Gonzales) @ Cleveland (Tomlin)

Team

Pitcher

Hand

SIERA

xFIP

ERA

Mariners

Marco Gonzales

L

2.81

2.41

5.56

Indians

Josh Tomlin

R

5.56

6.2

10.03

The bookmakers opened this game close to even. They still give Cleveland better chances, but Seattle is only a small underdog of 2.06 (+106) here. And I completely agree with them. An average bettor will probably jump on Cleveland at home for a very good price, but let’s check this interesting game. We have both pitchers with high ERA. But we have also one pitcher, who has much better other two numbers and I definitely give pitching advantage to Seattle here. Gonzales struck out 27 hitters in 22 games. Tomlin on the other side struck out 7 batters in 11 innings and what is even more interesting is that he already allowed 8 home runs. Second thing that is very interesting, is Tomlin’s record versus Seattle. He is 5-1 against Seattle with ERA of 3.74 and his team is 6-1. This is pretty good record, right? And an average bettor, who wants to bet on this game will take Tomlin, because he has very good record versus Seattle. But most bettors will also probably miss one very important thing. He played only 2 games versus Seattle in last 2 seasons and he allowed 17 hits, 6 runs in 11 innings. The other games were 2014 or older. Seattle is totally different team since 2014. And if we go deeper, we can check Tomlin’s numbers against current Seattle lineup. They combined 76 at bats, batting average of .329, 13 extra bases hits and 3 home runs. Three key players from Seattle – Cano, Seager and Cruz have very good numbers agaisnt Tomlin. Cano 2 home runs, BA 0.400 in 20 at-bats, Seager has 5 extra bases hits and batting average of 0.429 in 14 at bats and Cruz has a home run in 10 at bats versus Tomlin. Take into account that Cleveland scores only 3.3 runs versus lefties with batting average of 0.170.

Those are three interesting games for Sunday and I recommend, that you make an extra research. I just wanted to show you how you can look at games from a different perspective and especially you should not focus on mainstream numbers, that you get on ESPN.

Here are the projections for the rest of Saturday games…

DO YOU WANT TO LEARN how I project my own lines and get lifetime access to all my videos?

I can show you all this in my A Journey betting course (set of 42 videos and more coming). I already projected my odds for all Sunday’s MLB baseball games and I reveal my betting models in A Journey betting course. Don’t miss 30% OFF – still 2 days left for this special offer:

Thanks for reading my content and I wish you good luck whatever you bet.

I will show you today, how you can analyse baseball games and we will take a game between Boston Red Sox and Toronto Blue Jays as an example.

Boston Red Sox and Toronto Blue Jays will play the first game of a 3 game series in Canada and both teams had a day off yesterday. Boston Red Sox will start with Rick Porcello, right handed pitcher, who is 4-0 to the season with ERA of 1.40, whip 0.818 and 23/1 K/BB rate in 25 innings. Toronto Blue Jays on the other side will start with J.A. Happ, let handed pitcher, who is 3-1 to the season with ERA of 4.50, whip 1.273 and 31/7 K/BB rate in 22 innings so fart this season.

Boston is 17-4 to the season and they have an amazing start so far. They score 5.9 runs per game and two of four losses came in last two games. They lost two straight games in Oakland.

Toronto Blue Jays on the other side is 13-8 to the season and they score 5.5 runs per game. They are coming home after two big losses against Yankees on the road. Yankees won 3 out of 4 games in this series and in the last two games, they outscored Blue Jays by 14-2 in runs.

Those are just basic information that we can find anywhere and of course, this is not enough to make a final bet.

So, let’s start with couple of different approaches. Sports handicappers make bets on a different ways. Some bettors will make bets just based on their gut feeling, some bettors will just analyse line movement, some bettors will use strictly statics bets and some will combine all together. We have different methods, we have different styles and if your method is making a profit for you, this is ok.

I use my betting model to estimate my winning percentages. I turn those winning percentages into the odds and then I compare my odds with the bookmakers odds. My betting models are the heart of my sports betting decisions. But before we go to my projected odds on this game, let’s start with the odds. The odds are the key. Betting is not about finding the winners, but about finding the value. In other words it is about finding the right price in a sports betting market. And if you can get better price than market, then you are doing well. But to know what is a good price we need to research games and estimate our own odds somehow.

So, let’s research this game game as a sports bettors, not as a sports fans.

OPENING ODDS AND MOVEMENT

The first thing you can do is to check the opening lines or the odds if you like. There are couple of free sites, that share this information. Oddsportal and SBR are two of them.

I will take a look at Pinnacle sports odds. Pinnacle is probably the sharpest bookmaker in the world and what kind of information you get if you check the lines?

First (BOOKMAKERS OPINION) – when Pinnacle open the lines, you get their first opinion on this game. Of course this is not final, because they will later move the line because of betting action and possibly also because of some other information that they will get later (injuries, lineups,…). But let’s check their opening odds:

TORONTO – 2.11 (+111)

BOSTON – 1.83 (-120)

We can say, that this is bookmakers opinion on this game. We can easily turn those odds into percentages to see how much chances they give to home and away team. If we divide 1/2.11 and 1/1.83 we get implied probabilities. They added some margins this is why when you sum both numbers you will not get 1, but little bit bigger number:

1.83

0.5464480874

2.11

0.4739336493

SUM

1.020381737

If we cheat little bit, we can get probabilities on this game:

ODDS

Prob. (Margins)

Probability

1.83

0.5464480874

0.5362572191

2.11

0.4739336493

0.4637427809

SUM

1.020381737

1

I simply take out the margins (juice): (1.020381737 – 1)/2

So, what kind of information you get with opening odds?

Bookmakers gave 53.63% of chance to Boston and 46.37% of chance to Toronto. In other words if they repeat this game a lot of times, bookmakers think, that Boston will win around 54 times out of 100 and Toronto 46 times out of 100.

Second (Bettors opinion) – After the opening odds we usually see some line movement and usually professional bettors opinion is little bit different then bookmakers opinion:

The initial line movement shows, that there was an action on Toronto and bettors tried to get better price here. The odds started dropping later too. But initial line movement is something that we like to see. Note also, that sometimes such movement can be done intentionally too, because of better price later. But in general, initial line movement show that there is some action on Toronto. Bookmakers will move the line because of sharp bettors action. And we as a bettors we like to be on sharp side, not on public side.

Third (public opinion) – After bookmakers open the lines and move the line, public will later jump and there will probably be some other movement couple of hours before game starts.

What I wanted to show you here is that you can always check what is bookmakers opinion on games in terms of probability and what are initial line movements. If you estimate your chances and if bookmakers have the chance of around 55% on one team and you think or estimate your own odds on this team at around 95%, then something is wrong. Bookmakers opinions are pretty good and we are looking for games, where we think that their probabilities should be little bit lower or little bit bigger.

So, bookmakers gave Boston better chance, but the odds dropped after one hour on Toronto from 2.11 to 2.08 an later to 2.00. The question is will those odds go to 1.95 or will those odds go back to 2.05. This is the market and you can try to speculate and get the best price. And if your price will be better than it is a closing line, then you will bet closing line. Pinnacle says, that if you can beat the closing line constantly, this is better indicator of who is a winning bettor than a profit. And if you beat the closing line, but you still didn’t make a profit, you were unlucky.

BETTING MODEL, VALUE AND MY WINNING PERCENTAGES

There are different approaches and different betting styles, some bettors will say, that only line movement is important, some other will say, that only statistics/betting models is important and a lot of bettors will say, that we don’t need to use statistics and analytics and they have special gift for betting. If we exclude the last type of betting, because I unfortunately don’t have super-human betting power and I believe most of you also don’t have this power, we need to to work and research games. And one thing is for sure:

One baseball game is an event, where two possible outcomes are possible. Home team win and away team win.

I have projected my winning percentages for both teams. How, You can learn here.

I have projected that Toronto Blue Jay should have 58.7% of chance to win this game and Boston Red Sox only 41.30% of chance. If the model is correct somehow, I see that I give Toronto more than 50% of chance, while bookmakers give them less than 50% of chance.

My fair odds on Toronto are set at 1.70 and this is basically direct price, that I expect. Or in other words, if my trust the model, I would expect, that I make a profit of $70 for my risked $100 if I bet and win with Toronto.

But we saw, that bookmakers offer me the odds of around 2.00 at this moment. They are willing to pay me more than I would expect. If I bet $100 on Toronto, I will make a profit of $100. Because of that I have a value on Toronto Blue Jays. Of course, if I would be quicker and if I would take Toronto earlier (my betting model is not dependent on line movement), I would get even better price. Some better or smarter bettors were faster and take Toronto for much better price. But what I like here is that the initial line movement and my betting model are on the same side.

TRADITIONAL ANALYSIS OF THE GAME

After we have information about the odds and after you have estimated your own winning percentages, we can make an extra analysis. I usually don’t like to write analysis, because if you want to write good and unique analysis, you need at least 45 minutes. Bettors then read this analysis and from delivering to final bets we lose couple of hours. And let’s check what can happen if you are 2 hours too late:

Because of writing analysis we probably lose the opening price of 2.11, and let’s say, that you I write analysis and I get the price of 2.06 and you get this analysis 2 hours later. Yes, this is exactly this example

What that means in reality if you constantly get 2.00 instead of 2.06 on 1000 bets? And in Toronto vs Boston game we are talking about only 2 hours later.

Win%

W

L

Odds 2 (+100)

Odds 2.06 (+106)

47.50%

475

525

-50

-21.5

48.00%

480

520

-40

-11.2

48.50%

485

515

-30

-0.9

49.00%

490

510

-20

9.4

49.50%

495

505

-10

19.7

50.00%

500

500

0

30

50.50%

505

495

10

40.3

51.00%

510

490

20

50.6

51.50%

515

485

30

60.9

52.00%

520

480

40

71.2

In the best case (52% winning percentage) you can lose 31.2 units of profit on the long run, just because you didn’t make your own bets at the right time, but you read and follow other people’s picks. With $100 per unit, this is loss of $3120, just because of 2 hours late. Let’s go further. Betting $100 per game usually requires bankroll of $10.000, right? And losing $3120 on initial bankroll of $10,000 just because you are always too late, is little bit to much, isn’t it? Yes, of course every game is a different case and we can not use this example and implement it on every single baseball game, but I wanted to show you how much money you can lose because of writing and reading analysis of other people, instead of making your own.

But let’s get back to analysis of this game:

STARTING PITCHERS

The most important players in a baseball game are pitchers and because of them the odds changing on a daily basis, despite teams will play 3-4 games in a row against the same team.

Starting pitchers will start the game, which is 9 innings long (if we exclude extra innings if they happen). A lot of bettors will focus on ERA, which is not the best indicator of how good pitcher is, so I will show you couple of other things to check.

J.A. Happ is a lefty pitcher, who will start for Toronto and his ERA is 4.50 so far this season and this will tell us how many runs this pitcher allows per 9 innings. But ERA doesn’t include many other things and sometimes pitchers were just lucky. Imagine, that you have a pitcher with ERA 0, but he walked many hitters and he survived couple of bases loaded situation. Of course, ERA will be low, but on the long run, if he continues to play like this he will be hit hard. And ERA will not tell you this. ERA will tell you what happened, but we want to know what can possibly happen in the next game based on pitchers performance.

There are two very good sites like Fangraphs and Baseball-reference, where they provide some ERA metrics numbers and in this example we can check Happ’s xFIP (xFIP = ((13*(Fly balls * lgHR/FB%))+(3*(BB+HBP))-(2*K))/IP + constant). (fangraphs)

Rating

FIP

Excellent

2.90

Great

3.20

Above Average

3.50

Average

3.80

Below Average

4.10

Poor

4.40

Awful

4.70

HAPP ERA = 4.50

HAPP xFIP = 2.97

As you can see in his example, despite his ERA is not that great his xFIP is almost excellent and xFIP for example is better future predictor than ERA. So with Happ we have very good pitcher on the mound.

He struck out 31 hitters in 22 innings this season, which is amazing. He went 5.5 innings per game, so we can expect that 3 innings will be pitched by bullpen and the biggest problem so far I see is that he allowed 5 home runs. This is the reason for big ERA.

What about his history against current Red Sox lineup?

BATTER

AB

HR

R

SO

AVG

OBP

SLG

OPS

wOBA

J.D. Martinez R

10

0

2

0

0.3

0.417

0.3

0.717

0.342

Eduardo Nunez R

21

0

1

3

0.286

0.318

0.381

0.699

0.309

Christian Vazquez R

14

0

2

4

0.286

0.333

0.357

0.69

0.31

Rafael Devers L

6

0

0

2

0.333

0.333

0.333

0.667

0.3

Hanley Ramirez R

32

1

6

6

0.188

0.308

0.344

0.651

0.292

Mookie Betts R

26

1

3

2

0.192

0.222

0.423

0.645

0.272

Brock Holt L

9

0

1

2

0.222

0.3

0.333

0.633

0.285

Sandy Leon S

6

0

0

2

0.167

0.167

0.167

0.333

0.15

Jackie Bradley Jr. L

14

0

1

5

0.071

0.133

0.143

0.276

0.13

Andrew Benintendi L

10

0

0

2

0

0.167

0

0.167

0.117

Mitch Moreland L

5

0

1

2

0

0

0

0

0

Boston Red Sox:

153

2

17

30

0.196

0.266

0.301

0.567

0.255

As we can see, he has some very solid numbers against current Boston lineup, despite I would not pay such a big attention to those numbers because usually we have very small sample sizes and we must be careful how much weight we give.

However, Boston players combined 153 at bats against him with batting average of 0.196, which is also not most important metric for future predictions. But to get the first picture about how he played in the past against Boston Red Sox players we can check some numbers above in the table.

Happ is also 7-3 in his career against Boston and his team is 10-6 in those games. His career ERA versus Boston is 3.24.

Rick Porcello on the other side is a right handed pitcher, who will start for Boston. He is 4-0 to the season and he struck out 23 hitters in 25 innings. The most amazing thing about him so far is that he has amazing control. He walked only 1 hitter so far.

PORCELO ERA – 1.40

PORCELLO xFIP – 3.34

But if we check his xFIP numbers against Happ’s numbers, we see, that Happ has lower xFIP. At the end of the day, there will not be such a huge advantage and if we strictly stick with xFIP numbers, Toronto will have the advantage here.

Let’s check his numbers versus Toronto’s players:

BATTER

AB

HR

R

SO

AVG

OBP

SLG

OPS

wOBA

Luke Maile R

1

0

0

0

1

1

2

3

1.25

Steve Pearce R

9

0

1

0

0.444

0.444

0.667

1.111

0.478

Justin Smoak S

30

3

6

8

0.267

0.389

0.633

1.022

0.428

Kevin Pillar R

36

0

3

7

0.278

0.316

0.389

0.705

0.311

Teoscar Hernandez R

3

0

0

1

0.333

0.333

0.333

0.667

0.3

Aledmys Diaz R

3

0

1

1

0.333

0.333

0.333

0.667

0.3

Devon Travis R

15

0

1

1

0.267

0.312

0.333

0.646

0.291

Kendrys Morales S

39

2

5

7

0.205

0.244

0.385

0.629

0.272

Curtis Granderson L

13

0

1

4

0.231

0.231

0.231

0.462

0.208

Russell Martin R

29

1

4

7

0.103

0.188

0.207

0.394

0.184

Randal Grichuk R

2

0

0

1

0

0.333

0

0.333

0.233

Active totals for

Toronto Blue Jays:

180

6

22

37

0.239

0.297

0.4

0.697

0.307

Toronto have 180 at bats against him, with batting average of 0.239 and 6 home runs.

Porcello is 9-8 against Toronto with ERA of 4.98 and his team is 10-10. Solid numbers, but if you strictly bet based on this pitcher vs batter information, then betting on Happ versus Boston would make you +5.2 units of profit in his career, while betting on Porcello would make you a loss of 0.9 units in his career versus Toronto.

The conclusion about pitchers: According to xFIP we have small advantage on Toronto’s side. Both pitchers have been playing very well so far and we will probably see very good pitching duel. Happ has pitched well against Boston in the past as well.

BULLPEN

The old times, when pitchers went 9 innings and at the same time scored 3 home runs are gone. Starting pitchers average is around 5.5 innings per game (my number is 5.46 innings per game for qualified SP last 365 days). If we know, that the game is 9 inning long, we simply can not ignore last 3-4 innings right? This is still more than 30% of the game.

When you make an analysis on bullpen (relievers), you can always check bullpen usage and if their key relievers pitched in a game the day before. But in our case, both teams had day off yesterday, so I will consider that all relievers, that are not injured are available today and can be used.

BOSTON Pitchers

GP

IP

Matt Barnes

1

1.1

Heath Hembree

1

1

Brian Johnson

1

0

Joe Kelly

1

1

Craig Kimbrel

0

0

Carson Smith

1

0.1

Hector Velazquez

1

3

Marcus Walden

0

0

Team total IP:

6.2

Pitcher

GP

IP

John Axford

2

1.2

Danny Barnes

2

2

Tyler Clippard

1

1

Aaron Loup

1

1

Tim Mayza

0

0

Seung-Hwan Oh

2

1.2

Roberto Osuna

1

1

Ryan Tepera

1

1

Team total IP:

9.1

I like to compare teams bullpens advanced ERA metrics numbers and according to my numbers I rank Blue Jays bullpen little bit better. I rank Blue Jays bullpen as 7th best and Boston as 16th best in the league (out of 30 teams).

TORONTO BULLPEN ERA – 2.12

TORONTO BULLPEN xFIP – 3.74

BOSTON BULLPEN ERA – 3.25

BOSTON BULLPEN xFIP – 3.83

As you can see, I would give small advantage here to Blue Jays.

HITTING AND THE OFFENSE

So, after we get the first picture about pitchers we need to check how many runs can our team score. Mainstream statistics that most sports fans and commentators use are home runs (HR), batting average (BA) and runs (R). Those are not the best future predictors and I see that more and more people started to talk about other metrics.

But let’s start with the basic picture about those two teams.

Boston scores 5.9 runs per game and they are one of the best offensive teams so far. Toronto on the other side scores 5.5 runs per game, which is also about league average. But instead of focusing on batting average you can focus on some other things, like OBP, SLG, OPS, WRC+,…

And what I like to focus is on lefty vs righty matchups against hitters. In general, when left handed pitchers face left handed batters they have big advantage. It is much harder to hit left handed pitcher if you are a left handed batter. Second interesting thing is that there is much less left handed pitchers in the game and hitters sometimes are not that familiar with them. Of course this can not be the rule for every single player, but teams like to have at least one lefty in their rotation and at least one lefty in their bullpen so he can go against left handed batters in crucial moments.

According to my rankings I rank Boston as a 4th best offensive team in the league and Toronto as a 10th best team in the league. But this game is special because Boston will face a left handed pitcher and they were in 101 at bats this season against lefties. And what is interesting, I rank them as 29th team vs lefties so far. And today they will need to face Happ, that has almost excellent xFIP numbers and has very good past numbers vs Red Sox. Even if we check only runs/game, we see that Boston scores only 3.3 runs per game versus lefties, while on the other side they score much more vs righties. Note also, that Boston score little bit less on the road (4.7 compared to their overall 5.9 number)

Toronto on the other side score 5.5 runs per game, but they are much better versus right handed pitchers – 6.7 (this is the situation for them today) and they score more against lefties too – 5.8.

I rank Toronto as a 6th best team versus righties so far, while I rank Boston as a 29th versus lefties so far.

(of course I can not reveal everything in this post, but you can check my A Journey course, where I reveal exactly how I project my odds and what kind of metric and rankings I use)

FIELDING, ERRORS,…

The next thing you can do is to research couple of other things. How teams play in the field, how many errors they make, how good they are in stealing bases, etc…

BALLPARK FACTORS

We all know, that teams play in different ballparks and we have ballparks that are hitters friendly and ballparks that are pitchers friendly. In other words if Albert Pujols would play his whole career in Coors Field his numbers would be much better. I use ballpark adjusted numbers for my betting model. If you don’t use ballparks adjusted statistics, you can take this into account too.

Here is one interesting table from fantasypros, where you can get little bit better picture, which ballparks are hitters or pitchers friendly.

PARK NAME

RUNS

HR

1B

2B

3B

Coors Field(Colorado Rockies)

1.378

1.223

1.195

1.267

1.816

Globe Life Park in Arlington(Texas Rangers)

1.172

1.083

1.119

1.114

1.157

Chase Field(Arizona Diamondbacks)

1.164

1.119

1.024

1.229

1.711

Fenway Park(Boston Red Sox)

1.138

0.950

1.113

1.280

1.095

Progressive Field(Cleveland Indians)

1.138

1.043

1.070

1.234

0.635

Oriole Park at Camden Yards(Baltimore Orioles)

1.046

1.183

1.046

0.901

0.745

Target Field(Minnesota Twins)

1.046

1.082

1.067

1.046

1.032

Miller Park(Milwaukee Brewers)

1.045

1.178

0.941

1.070

1.000

Great American Ball Park(Cincinnati Reds)

1.037

1.133

0.970

1.001

0.734

Kauffman Stadium(Kansas City Royals)

1.031

0.795

1.007

1.183

1.398

Comerica Park(Detroit Tigers)

1.028

1.025

1.011

0.996

1.485

Yankee Stadium(New York Yankees)

1.025

1.301

0.942

0.856

0.613

Nationals Park(Washington Nationals)

1.005

1.030

1.044

1.004

0.652

Rogers Centre(Toronto Blue Jays)

0.993

0.978

0.948

1.142

1.000

Turner Field(Atlanta Braves)

0.990

0.819

1.016

0.976

0.812

Wrigley Field(Chicago Cubs)

0.985

1.004

0.971

0.933

1.135

Citizens Bank Park(Philadelphia Phillies)

0.980

1.234

0.947

0.901

0.861

PNC Park(Pittsburgh Pirates)

0.964

0.893

1.026

0.998

0.990

O.co Coliseum(Oakland Athletics)

0.957

0.860

0.971

1.011

1.365

U.S. Cellular Field(Chicago White Sox)

0.946

1.128

0.936

0.879

0.892

PETCO Park(San Diego Padres)

0.922

0.919

0.981

0.956

0.835

Tropicana Field(Tampa Bay Rays)

0.920

0.918

0.961

0.849

0.932

Safeco Field(Seattle Mariners)

0.912

0.994

0.946

0.891

0.754

Busch Stadium(St. Louis Cardinals)

0.912

0.870

1.043

0.957

0.835

Angel Stadium of Anaheim(Los Angeles Angels)

0.907

0.982

0.989

0.855

0.682

Citi Field(New York Mets)

0.900

0.941

0.889

0.892

0.655

Dodger Stadium(Los Angeles Dodgers)

0.899

0.973

0.930

0.984

0.517

AT&T Park(San Francisco Giants)

0.897

0.637

1.040

0.973

1.386

Marlins Park(Miami Marlins)

0.879

0.795

0.960

0.867

0.967

Minute Maid Park(Houston Astros)

0.850

0.972

0.926

0.880

1.107

UMPIRES

If you like, you can compare umpires and how they call strikes, balls, some of them favour home teams, etc. This is also another thing you can take into account.

INJURIES

It is of course important to take into account injuries. I use active rosters numbers, so the numbers from injured players are excluded and two notable missings are Donaldson fot Toronto (injured from 13.April) and Bogaerts for Boston (from 11.April).

CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDED BET

So, what we have here?

The bookmakers opened the odds at 2.11 on Toronto, but the odds dropped to 2.00 later. We have my betting model, where I have projected, that Boston should be an underdog and not Toronto.

We have Happ, who has very good history against Red Sox players and his advanced ERA-metrics (I used xFIP for this example) are even better than Porcello’s numbers. A lot of bettors will be fooled by ERA numbers, because we have Porcello with much better ERA and on the first look Happ ERA of 4.5 looks bad versus a team, that scores 5.9 runs per game.

But we can not take this 5.9 runs per game for Boston numbers, because they score much less against left handed pitchers (3.3 runs) and they will face one very good left handed pitcher today.

Toronto is an underdog here, despite they will probably have better pitcher on the mound and as we saw, they have slightly better bullpen so far too.

Toronto is also very good scoring home team and they play well against right handed pitchers too. I don’t see any big advantage from Boston in this game and I think we have a good underdog play on Toronto.

how are you? I hope you are well and I hope you are excited about MLB season 2018. Baseball season started few days ago and I made just couple of bets in my 5 year betting plan and fb challenge, but didn’t started yet with my MLB betting season and daily projections. The reason? I usually wait for couple of games in a new season and then I start betting. Season is long and I don’t want to jump on games like a crazy from the start.

Maybe you know an anecdote about two bulls: “An old bull and a young bull stand on a hillside, overlooking a pasture. The young bull says to the old bull, “Hey, let’s run down and fuck one of those heifers.” The old bull replies, “let’s walk down and fuck ’em all.”

I don’t want to be a young bull this season just because season started. I want to start slowly and be patient and when I get more familiar with the season I will bet on more and more games. And hopefully I will make a profit at the end.

I use statistics to estimate my own winning percentages, which are turned into the odds. Later I compare my odds with bookmakers odds to check where is the value. Before I make final decision, I usually make an extra analysis and mix my numbers with other information that I have. This is something I also recommend to my followers. But the heart of my baseball betting is my betting model and my projected odds will be the most important information this season to make final bets.

Two mistakes that I made last season were:

Start betting to early in the season, which is always very tricky. In the past I had great early season results (even pre-season), but in general it is a lot of luck involved and I am more comfortable when I have fresh stats from a new season.

I made too many gut plays. I tracked my plays, that were not supported by my math model and I call them “gut plays”. Intuition and experience are great, if you know how to use them, but on the long run I believe that facts are much more important. And the numbers are all about the facts. My gut plays were not good last season and I made more damage than anything good. This is why I will limit such plays.

But the model alone had very good results and the basic idea with projections and the model is to get the true picture about the games, that is based on the facts (not emotion). After that we can always stay away from the games, that we don’t like.

Even if I exclude my “gut plays”, my betting model had much better results after one month. As you can see below, the worst results were at the start of the season and after first month, results went up. But of course, this should not be the rule, that every season will be the same. Sometimes I had great first half and not so good second half.

What are projections and how I project games?

There are many different theories about games, betting, etc… I look at one baseball game as one event, where two teams play each other and both teams have a chance to win a game.

P(A) = Probability of team A to win a game

P(B) = Probability of team B to win a game

P(A) + P(B) = 1

With my baseball betting model and formulas that I have created in google sheets, I estimate my winning percentages. When I have winning percentages, I turn them into the odds.

How I will track my baseball record 2018?

Here you can download betting tracker for 2018 and analyse your own bets. Download and open file in google sheets.

Two things, that I will add this season and didn’t pay that much attention last season are analysing my betting performance versus closing lines (I will use Pinnacle closing lines) and I will also check p-value to see skill vs chance.

Yield, ROI, Profit,…

I will of course track basic stats and the goal is of course to make a profit at the end of the season.

Closing Line

According to Pinnacle (which is the sharpest bookmaker in the world): “The most accurate way we have found, to distinguish winning and losing players is to look at the odds a player received when they made their bet, and compare it with the Pinnacle Sports closing line on the game. If a player consistently beats our closing price, they are likely to be a long-term winner – period. Interestingly, we have found that this test is more reflective of a player’s future winning potential, than their historical win/loss record with the company.”

In other words sports betting is a market, where we try to get the best price possible. If you can get better odds than the “market”, then you beat it. In very simple example, if you bet at this moment on Boston Red Sox at 2.34 (+134) and the closing odds on Boston were at 2.20 (+120) you beat a closing line and this is good.

The goal will be to have positive CLV and to beat closing lines more often than not.

Opening vs Closing Line

I will also track my bets to see which bets were on the right line movement. So it the opening odds were at 2.5 and closing odds were at 2.34, I was on the right team.

Skill vs Luck

I will also add one very simple calculator of p-value in betting tracker to get first picture about my performance and by how many times my result is by a chance or by a skill. Note also that this will start showing some first results only after 100 bets. But I believe, that I will make at least 500 bets this season.

I will challenge myself in different categories, which will be even bigger challenge. I will try have positive numbers in all three categories. Of course profit will still be a goal at the end, but I also want to have positive numbers in other two categories. Everything I do with my site, I do long term and many bettors who will read this, track and analyse their record this way or even join me on my A Journey will become simply better on the long run.

The odds

I will try to stay in the range between 1.75 (-133) and 2.85 (+185), but I will make extra analysis for the odds out of this range and then I will make final decisions. My model had the best results in this range.

Units

All my bets will be in the range between 1-2 units. I recommend that 1 unit is 0.5%-1% of your bankroll. Is this % of current bankroll of starting bankroll?

I will use 1 unit as 1% of starting bankroll for baseball season. It will be separate betting project. But those bets will be also played in my 5-year bitcoin betting project, where I use proportional strategy.

Pitchers listed

All pitchers must be listed for my bets in this project. But this also depends on your bookmaker and where you will bet. If you bet at Nitrogensports for example, they don’t have pitchers listed.

Bet types

Most of my bets will be moneyline bets. Very few run line and maybe just couple of games, where I will bet on totals.

The margins (juice) is taken from the game between Oakland and Angels 1 hour before the game start on April 6th, 2018 (CET time zone = 19:00).

Bookmakers with the lowest juice are fiat bookmakers Pinnacle for European players, 5Dimes for US players and bitcoin bookmaker Bitcoinrush.

That doesn’t mean that the best odds will always be at bookmakers with lowest margins. In this game, the best odds on Oakland were at Betonline (2.27), but because of that, they have weaker odds on Angels. So, anyone who wants to bet on Oakland, the best price was on Betonline, despite they don’t have the lowest margin (juice). It is always recommended to have multiple accounts to get better odds. All my bets will be played at Pinnacle and Bitcoinrush (bitcoin betting).

When and where I will share my bets?

All my bets will be shared on STEEMIT. Steemit links are also shared on twitter and my facebook page. I will start slowly with less bets in first month.

When and where I will share my projected odds?

All my projected odds will be shared membership area first. Later I will create a video on youtube, where I will comment games and my bets. You can subscribe to youtube channel here. You can become a member if you join my betting course here.

I will start sharing my projected odds on 23th April, 2018.

I wish you successful MLB season and as always like to say, do your own research.

I asked my friend, who love sports betting, what kind of money management he has.

He said:”Every weekend I take $200-$300 and this is my bankroll. I bet $50 per game and that’s it. And then the next weekend the same.”

Well, this is not a bankroll. He basically takes money from his monthly income stream and bet what he has. If he lose that money, he takes more. In many cases such behaviour is very dangerous.

Bankroll is something, that you can lock for some time. Bankroll is something, that you don’t need for a living. Bankroll is something that you risk and hope that it will raise. The richest people in the world generated at least 5 different incomes and relying on only one “speculative investment”, which sports betting for sure is, is very very dangerous.

The first rule is that you never bet money that you can not afford to lose. You should not rely on sports betting money to pay monthly bills and you should not expect that you will win every month. If you understand this, if you bet with the money that you don’t need for a living and if you stick with bet size, that is around 1% of your bankroll, then you are already better than most bettors in the world.

Because you know…I like to say, that bettor who has strong money management but losing picks, will always survive. Maybe he will have bad season, maybe he will decide later that betting is not for him, but because he has separate money for betting and because he has some kind of money management, he will survive for sure.
On the other side bettors with winning picks, but without any strategy will not survive. Usually they lost everything in just 2-3 weeks, after they had for example 6-7 good months. And then troubles starts. Some people start taking more and more from their monthly income streams and this is where the things become very dangerous.

We all like to talk about bankroll, but the reality is, that only few have bankroll and only few work on it.

There is a difference between bankroll and a budget. If you take money from your income stream for gambling activities all the time, you are on a BUDGET. If you lose money all the time and if you don’t have bankroll especially for risk investments, then you are on a BUDGET.

There are three types of gamblers that are on a budget:

First group of gamblers will fund their gambling activities from their monthly income stream and they will spend more than they can afford. They will rather gamble than pay monthly bills, even food.

The second group are gamblers who will still take money every month from their income stream, but they are smart enough to understand how much they can take. They will bet only the money they can lose. This is the money they would spend for some “unnecessary” things anyway. They will bet without any strategy and they do this for fun, which is totally ok.

And there is a third group of very few that work on building a bankroll. Your betting fund only becomes a bankroll when you stop taking money from your income stream and you take out all of the money you took previously when you were on a budget.

When this happens we can start talking about BANKROLL. It will take some time and nothing comes over night.

WHY IT IS SO IMPORTANT TO BE ON A BANKROLL

One of the first things is for sure mindset. When you know that you risk money that you can lose without any serious consequences, you can be more relaxed, you will not find yourself in a “must win” position and you can even survive negative season which will not be a disaster. Some smart professional investors have couple of bankrolls and they have money on the side if something bad happens.

Smart investors from other fields (not sports betting related) would say, that the best money invested is that money, where you almost forgot on it. There were couple of cases I know from crypto world, where they forgot on their early bitcoin investments and later they saw, that they have millions of dollars. Of course you will not forget your money in sports betting, because we bet every day, we must analyse games every day, but money for betting should be definitely money, that you decide to forget from the day one. With this in mind, you can focus on finding the real value bets and not putting yourself in a must-win position every day.

https://underdogchance.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Girls-Night-Out.png10801920MBhttps://underdogchance.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/logostran.pngMB2018-04-05 00:12:092018-04-05 00:47:02Are you on a bankroll or a budget?

​Let’s say, that I tell you: “Mercedes is a very good car. Buy a Mercedes for $40.000”

You decide that you will buy this car. But when you want to buy a Mercedes, the price jumped to $46.000. Will you buy it or not?

You don’t know, because you don’t know the true value of Mercedes. And I also didn’t tell you the true value, because I simply don’t know how to estimate the true value of this car.

THIS WAS A PICK

The basic concept in our life, when it comes to money is that we buy things for low price or at least for fair price. It is the same with all kind of investments (buy low, sell high), it is the same concept when you go to a store or a market,…and it is the same concept when it comes to a sports betting.

If you always buy things, that are overpriced, you will lose money. Right?

Making a pick is very easy. Anyone can make a pick and I would never pay for a pick.

​

Example of picks:

​Bet on Lakers -7 (1 unit)

Bet on Boston Red Sox +124 (3 units)

Bet on Real Madrid @1.78 (1.5 units)

The problem is…

that those prices are changing all the time in sports betting. I don’t believe, that Mercedes price is changing every 10 minutes, but in sports betting and some other investments, especially speculative, the prices are changing all the time.

To make money, you need to buy things for the right price. If you buy high and sell low, you lose. If you buy low and sell high, you win.

You don’t know, because you didn’t have the projections or if you like you didn’t have the winning percentages to see what to bet, when to bet and how much to bet.

And here we come to PROJECTIONS.

Projections will tell you the price. Projections will tell you your winning percentages, your spreads and your totals. The basic concept to win at sports betting is to bet on games, where you give your team better winning percentage than bookmaker. I hope you agree with me. Those projections are made independently and without bookmakers. When I make projections for NBA for example, I estimate my own spreads and then later bookmakers throw out their lines. I simply compare my prices with their.

Example of projections:

​Lakers -12

Boston +160

Real Madrid 1.30

The projections will tell you this:

​Play Lakers if you get Lakers -11 or better (-10, -9, -8,…depends on betting model and method)

Play Boston for the price of +161 or more (depends on the method)

Play Real Madrid for the price of 1.31 or better

In other words (if we take Boston example):

​I will play Boston only if someone (bookmaker) will pay me at least $160 for my every risked $100.

Or for example….I will buy a Mercedes only if the price will be $41.345 or less

If the bookmaker will pay me only $110 (the odds of +110), I will not bet on it, because I will pay too much. Paying too much all the time = losing money.

Betting on the wrong price = losing money.

PICKS WITHOUT PROJECTIONS ARE USELESS

When I started betting I must say, that I understood the concept pretty quickly. The biggest problem was how to estimate the odds, how to calculate winning percentages. I already understood, that betting on the right price is the key concept. But I also knew, that creating some imaginary price in my head is also not the right way.

Bookmakers were smarter and smarter and even those local bookmakers didn’t make any mistakes more. The prices were sharper and sharper and I was trying to find the way how to estimate my own odds and winning percentages.

Of course this can not be made in your head without any formulas or without betting model. I hope we all agree with this. Owners of sportsbooks don’t wake up in the morning and take a paper and say: “ok, Lakers will be -3, Celtics will be -4,…or maybe -4.5….let it be -3.5…”

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So, if I have pick from someone: “Boston +124”, I simply don’t know what to do with this. It is almost not possible, that the price is the same.

I also don’t know if I should buy a Mercedes for $46.000. Right?

And the pick without projection is almost useless. Betting without previously projecting the winning percentages, is nothing else than – guessing. Some handicappers can guess well, but at the end of the day, if you follow them, you will not know when you should bet the game or when you should stay away.